Thinking Theater NYC

Following her critically acclaimed run in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, NYC-based comedian and viral sensation Maria DeCotis brings her darkly funny, musically-driven solo comedy show  Emotionally Unreasonable , directed by Ryan Cunningham (Emmy winner, Broad City , Ziwe )   to Joe's Pub. Have you ever felt threatened when someone shows you their engagement ring? Have you ever been to a wedding and thought, “these people should NOT be getting married?!” Maria DeCotis has too, except she's the one marrying them. Emotionally Unreasonable is an hour of stand-up and musical comedy about her experience as a professional wedding officiant. Expect powerful storytelling, original music, and punchlines you never see coming. She explores power imbalances, femme robots, turning 30, and her unique perspective on legalizing love. Emotionally Unreasonable is a comedic reckoning with survival, told from inside the most romanticized institution we have. The Diddy verdict has proven, once aga...

Jason, Medea & the Tragedy at the PS19 Talent Show Written and performed by Mark Blane Directed by Dante Fuoco Presented at spit&vigor tiny baby blackbox theatre 115 Macdougal St, Manhattan, NYC - Studio 3C June 26-August 28, 2025 The story of Jason and Medea, particularly as recounted in Euripides' play Medea (431 BCE) is, like the oft-adapted Macbeth , a tragic tale of ambition, betrayal, and murder among public figures that seems to invite regular reinvention in the modern era. Political and sexual perfidy in pursuit of social advancement, it turns out—not to mention violent revenge—translate quite well for contemporary audiences. With Jason, Medea & the Tragedy at the PS19 Talent Show , film and theater artist Mark Blane transposes the titular couple to twenty-first century New York City in a lean, captivating solo show that ingeniously reimagines the ancient Greek hero and sorceress as East Village actors. The play is also being adapted into a film, scheduled to ...

 The Broadway Bound Theatre Festival proudly presents the world premiere of Bengal to Berlin , a bold new musical by playwright and scientist Hasan Padamsee, with performances on August 7, 9, and 10 at AMT Theater in Manhattan. The story is poignantly portrayed through the soundscapes of musical theater and Hindustani music in more than 15 songs by Zlaja Miric and choreography in Bengali and Berlin cabaret styles. Directed by Katrin Hilbe, the show weaves together science, identity, and resistance in a way that feels especially resonant today. Bengal to Berlin captures the spirit of Satyen Bose, a brilliant mind forged in the fires of colonial Bengal. Bose is a revolutionary scientist who dares to defy not only British rule but the injustices within his own society. In 1925, against all odds, Bose’s groundbreaking scientific work reaches Albert Einstein in Berlin to form a historic collaboration. In 2025, we mark the 100th anniversary of the fateful meeting. This dynamic ensemble ...

Alice Fishbein. Photo by Caeli Smith It's been 84 years… or 26, since April 1999, when six-year-old Alice Fishbein was finally allowed to watch James Cameron's classic, Titanic , on VHS, and a star was born. Written and performed by  Alice Fishbein , a tour de force in the comedy scene of New York City, and directed by Ryann Lind,  Leo Still Dies in the End is a one-woman parody re-enactment of James Cameron’s Titanic where Alice plays all the roles and the scenes are randomly selected by a prize wheel. Some may call it a sickness, but Alice calls it “nostalgia.” Leo Still Dies in the End is a laugh out loud commentary on how the content we consumed as children affects us as we grow up. The show’s pre-production began in Alice’s parents’ apartment, where a young Alice would mouth the words along to the entire movie. It was soon subsequently banned in the apartment. However, the show concept really formed during a trip to Portugal in 2019 when, during dinners, Alice’s si...

The Tempest Written by William Shakespeare Adapted and directed by Kathy Curtiss Presented by Renaissance Now Theatre & Film at Chain Theatre 312 West 36 Street, Floor 3 & 4, Manhattan, NYC July 2-5, 2025 Carter McEwan, (Mariner), Ethan Freestone (Trinculo), Grace Fillmore (Boatswain), Seth Johnson (Ferdinand). Photo by Jonathan Slaff. The Tempest is one of William Shakespeare's plays most overtly concerned with art and its presentation, making it, in a metatheatrical sense, a particularly apt choice for Renaissance Now Theatre & Film's third season of Shakespearean plays adapted with additions of dialogue in contemporary prose, or "now speak," to highlight themes relevant to contemporary audiences. There exists a long tradition of interpreting sorcerer Prospero's magical "art" as an analogue for theater due to his managing of plot and spectacle throughout The Tempest , and while the "now speak" of this Tempest , courtesy of dire...

Clay Mommy Written by Aviva Pearl Creation Directed by Jael Scott Presented at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC July 1-2, 2025 As a monster, the golem, a humanoid creature in Jewish tradition commonly created from mud or clay and animated via a word written on its forehead or on paper placed into its mouth, destabilizes normative boundaries and categories. A golem occupies the eponymous role of Clay Mommy in Aviva Pearl Creation's play of the same name, adding a complementary supernatural layer to the show's concern with such destabilizations, as well as with self-fashioning and mothering. With an all-trans-femme cast, Clay Mommy presents a nuanced narrative of one young woman's struggles to define and enact what it means for her to be a daughter and granddaughter, a prospective mother, a trans woman, and Jewish after she returns from New York City to the West Coast and her estranged mother. Clay Mommy is part of FRIGID New York's 2025 Queerly Festiv...

King Lear Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Judith Jarosz  Presented by Theater 2020 at The Great Room at A.R.T./New York studios 138 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NYC June 12-29, 2025 L to R: Declan Hutcheon as Edgar, David Fuller at King Lear, & David Arthur Bachrach as The Fool. Photo by John Hoffman Power, aging, family dynamics—perennially-relevant topics and ones which Theater 2020’s astutely-acted production of King Lear presents in a fresh and compelling way. With the set comprised of just a few stools, one containing the crown Lear divests himself of during the play’s opening scene, an ever-present reminder of the stakes of this family feud, the production’s versatile, dynamic, talented cast creates a captivating new portrayal of this classic tale’s exploration of the relationship among power, authority, and legitimacy.  David Fuller’s Lear leads the cast with a truly dazzling portray of the titular Lear, fully capturing the character’s capricious...

Femme in Yellow Tombola: mystical queer italian bingo Written and performed by Summer Minerva Presented at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 12 and 28, 2025 Numerous cultures have traditionally included–and often celebrated–third gender categories: a person might be, for instance, a bakla in the Philippines, two spirit or equivalent designations among various North American Indigenous peoples, or a femminiello in Naples, Italy. It is the femminiello  who is a central, structuring figure in Summer Minerva's punningly titled solo show Femme in Yellow Tombola: mystical queer italian bingo . Feminielli , while socially excluded in some ways—prompting them to queer certain traditions—are also considered lucky and, relatedly, have often called the numbers in the titular tombola, a traditional game comparable to bingo but in which the numbered squares have names and meanings attached to them (number 66, for example, is le due zitelle , the two spinsters, associated...

Tiger Tail Written by Tennessee Williams Directed by Geoffrey Horne Presented by Shakespeare Downtown at Castle Clinton Battery Park, Manhattan, NYC June 12-22, 2025 Billie Andersson. Photo by Amy Goossens. One might associate Tennessee Williams, whose work is full of characters who are trapped–often in inadequate domestic spaces, relationships, or both–with claustrophobic enclosure rather than the openness, even expansiveness, of outdoor theater. However, in bringing Williams's rarely performed Tiger Tail to Battery Park's Castle Clinton, Shakespeare Downtown demonstrates that the work loses none of its sweaty intensity in the move to the open air. The forerunners of Tiger Tail are a pair of Williams one-acts, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and The Long Stay Cut Short (1946), which provided the basis for the Williams-penned and Elia Kazan-directed film Baby Doll (1956), which itself Williams later adapted into Tiger Tail , published in 1978. This textual history introduce...

The Gay Social Network - A One Woman Show Written and performed by Seerat Jhajj Directed by Pearl Emerson With Maya O'Day Presented at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 18, 2025 Seerat Jhajj (front) and Maya O'Day (rear). Photo by Marissa Moorhead Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, never a paragon of ethics, has really leaned into the role of insecure technocapitalist supervillain in recent years, joining peers such as Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Jeff Bezos as a prominent living reminder of why billionaires should not exist. In The Gay Social Network - A One Woman Show , Seerat Jhajj takes the 2010 film about the founding of Facebook, The Social Network , written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, as a jumping-off point for a thoroughly hilarious, inventive, and queer skewering of Zuckerberg and the mindset that he represents. This week's performance of The Gay Social Network , headed to Edinburgh Fringe Fest later this summer, was part of FRIGI...

Henry V  Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Jonathan Hopkins Presented by Smith Street Stage  at Carroll Park Court Street and Smith Street, between Carroll Street and President Street, Brooklyn, NYC Juhe 5-29, 2025 Smith Street Stage’s summer productions in Carroll Park are a beloved neighborhood tradition, and this year’s offering, Henry V , is a stunning way to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary season. While the production’s standout performances, led by McLean Peterson’s brilliant King Henry, are alone noteworthy, the staging, including fight choreography and original music, all contribute to this timely and timeless exploration of leadership and nation. The production features a truly rich range of performances from its entire cast. Oliver Palmer stands out as both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Fluellen, making the former’s long-winded justification of Henry’s claim to the French throne humorous rather than mind-numbingly boring and embodying the latter ...

At the Barricades Written by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrain Directed by Federica Borlenghi Presented by What Will the Neighbors Say? at MITU580 580 Sackett St., Brooklyn, NYC June 12-29, 2025 The company. Photo by Pablo Calderón-Santiago It's not hard to see the timeliness of the exploration of antifascist struggle in 1930s Spain presented by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrain's world premiere play At the Barricades when the day we saw the show was also marked in the United States by political assassinations and by nationwide protests against our own openly corrupt, increasingly fascist government. That government, in fact, rescinded an NEA grant for At the Barricades (as it did for many other productions and arts organizations) for "not 'aligning with the president's priorities,'" forcing theater company What Will the Neighbors Say? to work with IndieSpace to secure a community loan so that the production could be mounted as scheduled. (L-R) Step...

Mary & the Shelleys Created and written by L.X Moon Presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 13 and 28, 2025 In the celebratory new single "Wearing Black," from Laura Jane Grace in the Trauma Tropes, trans punk musician Grace sings that her "pride's a riot" and that she will be "[w]earin' black to the Pride parade." If more than one element of that sentence resonates with you, then Mary & the Shelleys , which tells the story of its titular, reanimated Mary through original punk and postpunk songs, should be at the top of your to-see list. Of course, non-punk/horror/horrorpunk fans should also check it out; monstrosity in Mary & the Shelleys is, after all, tied to inclusivity. Mary & the Shelleys is part of FRIGID New York's 2025 Queerly Festival, " FRIGID’s annual celebration of all things artistic and LGBTQIA2S+ ," which is currently curated by co-artistic director Jim...

Shakespeare Sports Theatre Company will open its Shakespeare Summer Tour with a new production of the Comedy of Errors  directed by Michael Hagin and with Adam Sherwin as stage manager.  Shakespeare's hilariously haywire Comedy of Errors is a frolicsome farce so fantastically foolish that it's practically a recipe for roaring laughter. Imagine, if you will, a bustling ancient Ephesus, where not one but TWO sets of identical twins are about to stumble headlong into a hilarious hullabaloo! We're talking Antipholus of Syracuse and his ever-so-loyal (and equally confused) servant, Dromio of Syracuse, who unwittingly wander into the very city inhabited by their spitting images, Antipholus of Ephesus and his own bewildered Dromio! This production of The Comedy of Errors , a play where mistaken identities run riot, features the following cast: Vic Gitre, Charlie Keegan James, Emily Glaser, Jennifer Kim, Melissa Meli, Erica Gerold, Katie Freimann, Lila Ashley Meyers, Kasey C...

  The Leg Conceived by Sophie Amieva and Katerina Marcelja Directed by Sophie Amieva Presented by notAmuse Theater at MITU580 May 23-June 7, 2025 Photo by Rebecca Marcela Oviatt (BECCAVISION)  The Leg , the latest performance work by notAmuse Theater, is a captivating experience of an off-kilter world which may in fact be our own. The well-balanced ensemble of performers not only play off one another but contend with their costumes–some with exaggerated straitjacket sleeves or yards of tulle–and a space continually reshaped by the inflation/deflation of impressive fabric set pieces amongst and above them. Photo by Rebecca Marcela Oviatt (BECCAVISION)   notAmuse Theater (under the direction of Sophie Amieva and production designer Katerina Marcelja) integrates a range of theatrical traditions from Butoh to Buffon to create works which address structures of social and political power. The Leg (choreography by Mark Bankin, with lighting by Jacqueline Scaletta and sound de...